“CONGRATULATIONS,” the card attached to a gorgeous display of red, pink and yellow roses reads. “You’re going to Jamaica!”

Is it for me?

Dude, I wish.

No, it’s for my friend Caitlin. She’s what I like to call the Great White Hope of New York dating.

She’s beautiful. She’s smart. She’s career-oriented. She’s 37.

And until 2007, she was just another perpetually single, beautiful, smart, career-oriented girl.

Until the day she decided to change her entire life around.

“I just sat home one night thinking about what I really wanted,” she says. “And I knew: I wanted to meet someone. I wanted to get married. I wanted to have a great relationship.”

So she started e-mailing. She started telling everyone she knew. She started flirting with guys for practice, even though she later found out they were complete and total toolbags. No matter.

She knew what she wanted.

Then New Year’s Eve came. She went to a party where a particularly Normal Guy asked for her phone number, and she treated it like a joke.

“Sure, I agreed to date him,” she says. “But I didn’t expect it to go anywhere. He was so kind and sweet and thoughtful. He complimented me all the time. He had a career. So I told everyone there was no way he was the right guy for me. He was too nice.”

It was a crappy winter day when their scheduled make-or-break third date arrived. Caitlin didn’t even want to face him in person. An e-mail blowoff would work. He was a Normal Guy – he’d be fine with it.

But then . . . his gift came.

After telling him that she scraped the ice from her car window with her shoe, he, in a very grand non-Normal Guy gesture, sent over a box that should have contained roses – but instead held a brand-new window scraper.

She was torn.

“Get rid of it,” I said to her at the time. “The gift is just dragging you down; it’s distracting you from your mission.”

But that same little voice that told Caitlin she needed to start thinking about what she really wanted out of life also told her not to take the safe, beautiful, smart, career-oriented girl way out.

She decided to see him in person.

Suddenly, he stopped being Normal Guy. He became Derek.

The parlance changed. She stopped selling out the details of their dates. Said she liked him. Kept things private.

Soon after, a new box arrived. But this one contained a dozen long-stem “just because” roses.

Yes, just because.

“I have a boyfriend,” she said one day not too many months later, her eyes brighter, her face lighter. “My boyfriend loves me. We’re in love.”

Then seven months to the day they first met, she started crying. Then laughing. Then crying.

“I’m engaged,” she said. “I’m getting married.”

And now, they’re going to Jamaica.

But the Great White Hope wants you to know: Happily ever after can happen to you, too.

“It took me realizing that someone who treats me that well is not necessarily a loser,” she says. “If you want to find the right person, you just need to keep your heart and mind open. I really believe that.”